Mobility and Social Network Effects on Extremist Opinions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how social network structures influence the emergence and reduction of extremist opinions using a CODA-based model, revealing that network dynamics can mitigate extremism.

Contribution

It demonstrates that in the CODA model, extremism naturally arises across various social networks and can be reduced by allowing agents to change their network positions.

Findings

Extreme opinions are ubiquitous in the CODA model across different networks.

Reducing extremism depends on specific network details.

Agent mobility in the network decreases the number of extremists.

Abstract

Understanding the emergence of extreme opinions and in what kind of environment they might become less extreme is a central theme in our modern globalized society. A model combining continuous opinions and observed discrete actions (CODA) capable of addressing the important issue of measuring how extreme opinions might be has been recently proposed. In this paper I show extreme opinions to arise in a ubiquitous manner in the CODA model for a multitude of social network structures. Depending on network details reducing extremism seems to be possible. However, a large number agents with extreme opinions is always observed. A significant decrease in the number of extremists can be observed by allowing agents to change their positions in the network.